This course is focused on understanding how individual organisms survive in their environments and how species deal with common problems (respiration, energy acquisition, water balance) using similar, or sometimes very different, tools. This course also explores specialized adaptations to extreme environments from deserts to the deep seas. As one of the main class assignments, I would like students to substantially expand on and edit existing Wikipedia pages on animal physiology to add information relevant to comparative (I.e, non human) species and how these adaptations facilitate survival in their environments.